Getting Started: Corporate Blogging

A blog is a personal journal published on the Internet. They’re interactive and may provide commentary on specific subjects and can act as online brand advertising. So why should your company blog?

Attract an audience

Inform and allow interaction

Recruit help

Become a thought leader

Respond to stories and customers input

Grow a community

Initiate sales

You can determine if it’s worth building your company a blog by asking these questions:

Who do you hope to reach?

What will you talk about?

What is your audience interested in?

You can find these answers by asking your readers through surveys and polls, or utilizing customer comments and inquiries. In the end, make sure you will serve the audience needs, wants, motivations. Finally, make it yours — unique to you!

If you are a B2C business you canblog about your new products, featured products, and services. It is a great opportunity to share the upcoming events with your customers, as well as to let them know about success the company has had (awards and articles). You should utilize the blog to publicize product promotions and any projects or products that are coming soon. You can use the comments and concerns of your customers to create content that others would find useful. Here are some of the perks of having a corporate blog:

Demonstrating thought leadership. Sharing your smarts with the world and showing that you’re a leader in your field by continually sharing your insight on the things that matter most to your customers, employees, and prospects. You should cover everywhere your customers and clients expect you to be — chances are they will be looking to your blog to bring a human element to your brand, event, or product.

Building community. Build great content with an inviting forum, promote it, and people will make your blog a destination. Be timely and communicate news, this keeps your customers and non-customers informed about the latest and greatest developments happening in your industry.

Building brand awareness. When people are searching for topics related to your business they are more likely to find you if you’re blogging and creating content surrounding your product regularly. This means more people will get to know your brand.

Improving SEO. If you are sharing great content about topics related to your organization, that hold the key words your audience is looking for, you’ll get higher rankings on Google and other search engines. Using visuals and bullets, making blogs short, encouraging comments, using catchy titles, and responding expeditiously to comments is also a great way to boost your SEO through your blog.

WordPress and Blogger are two popular blogging platforms. WordPress has both free and paid options. It provides access to advertising platform and great themes to get you started. The software is free to download but should be hosted somewhere. It is also necessary to purchase a domain name.

In terms of how often you should blog, like other social media platforms, your blog will flourish with consistency. Try blogging at least once a week at a minimum, more if you can. A lot of companies have built communities around their blog, inviting customers to engage with them on a daily basis.

If you’re searching for more content, ask a valued customer, co-worker, or partner to do a guest post. Recurring features is a great way to bring readers back to the blog, like weekly interview series, interviews with industry leaders, and questions of the week. The important thing is not to get overwhelmed. Blogging should be a priority, but it’s not the end of the world if you skip a week here and there.